The Wikipedia article is interesting.
Because the U.S. military planners assumed "that operations in this area will be opposed not only by the available organized military forces of the Empire, but also by a fanatically hostile population",[8] high casualties were thought to be inevitable, but nobody knew with certainty how high. Several people made estimates, but they varied widely in numbers, assumptions, and purposes — which included advocating for and against the invasion — afterwards, they were reused to debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Predictions were "reused to debate over the atomic bombings"... sounds to me like a much higher casualty prediction = greater moral justification for using the A-Bomb. It kind of makes sense to me that the US would focus on the 'millions of probable casualties' when defending use of the weapon, as opposed to 'we really don't know if it caused less casualties', which no one really wants to hear.
I suppose my only point is I doubt, in retrospect, that some of the casualty predictions near the bottom of the page were realistic. One of them suggests 5 million Americans & 10 million Japanese casualties as a result of invasion. I guess I have a reaaaally hard time believing this. Who was supplying the Japanese with ammo, guns, gas, concrete, electricity, etc. after most of their cities and industrial base had been destroyed through bombing? The place was a complete shambles... almost all able-bodied units had been eliminated or were stuck somewhere else during the previous 5-10 years.
As I've mentioned before, I'm aware the wikipedia articles and Jim's Guide to WWII dispute what I'm saying. No surprises there... I must be a Tower.
